When The Great Investors Err

Mark Twain was a literary giant — but a horrible investor. John Maynard Keynes was one of history’s greatest economists, but his genius for economics was less helpful to his own investment choices than his mental flexibility. Warren Buffett’s investment track record is almost without equal, but he once made a $6 billion mistake.

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Warren Buffett's Investment Track Record: When Oracles Err

Transcript

Hey everybody. I'm Stacey Vanek Smith and I'm Cardiff Garcia. Welcome to the indicator where every day we get a kind of shameful scandalous joy from watching the mistakes of famous people celebrities. We love it when people fail. Know what we do here is we tell short stories about the economy. In today's short story is about the biggest investment mistakes ever made by three famous people.

We took three examples from a new book called big mistakes. It is by Michael Batt. He is research director at Rynhold wealth management.

Instead of writing a book about the best ideas from the best investor which sounds kind of boring Yeah. Michael wrote a book about the worst ideas from the best investors.

What did you want to get across. Well I think that investing is really hard for everybody whether you're managing a hundred billion dollar hedge fund or you trust your 401k. It's really hard for all of us and we all face different challenges whatever you're doing in your methodology or buying hold or trade or whatever it is it's difficult and I think for some how people still underestimate how difficult it is.

Author: Jacob WolinskyJacob Wolinsky is the founder of ValueWalk.com, a popular value investing and hedge fund focused investment website. Prior to ValueWalk, Jacob was VP of Business Development at SumZero. Prior to SumZero, Jacob worked as an equity analyst first at a micro-cap focused private equity firm, followed by a stint at a smid cap focused research shop. Jacob lives with his wife and three kids in Passaic NJ. -
Email: jacob(at)valuewalk.com - Twitter username: JacobWolinsky - Full Disclosure: I do not purchase any equities to avoid even the appearance of a conflict of interest and because at times I may receive grey areas of insider information. I have a few existing holdings from years ago, but I have sold off most of the equities and now only purchase mutual funds and some ETFs. I also own 2.5 grams of Gold